Buyer energy has returned to the market with benchmarks showing mortgage rates hitting some of their lowest levels since September in the past week. While they have ticked up again over the past few days, reflecting continued rate volatility in the market, some signs show that buyer optimism has renewed.
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What is Mortgage Insurance and How Does it Work?
When shopping for your mortgage, you may already know some of the one-time costs involved, such as down payment and closing costs. But there are also some recurring costs — like mortgage insurance — that you should get familiar with, too. So, what is mortgage insurance — and how do you know if you must […]
4 Homebuying Tips for Tipped Employees
Plenty of people rely on tips for some or all of their income. In fact, millions of Americans work in the kinds of service and hospitality industry jobs that have traditionally relied on tips for compensation — and that number is expected to increase in the coming decade. You might think that buying a home is just […]
To Buy or Not to Buy: What to Do When Mortgage Rates Are Rising
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates three times in 2018, and they’re not finished: another hike is expected before the end of the year. If that’s not bad enough, most financial analysts agree that we can look forward to additional interest rate increases in 2019. Plenty of people would rather watch paint dry than […]
A History of Credit Scores and Credit Reporting
Credit scores are a fact of life for Americans in the 21st-century, but credit scores haven’t always existed. Without credit scores, lenders might still be relying on handshakes and other subjective measures to determine credit-worthiness. Doing so would leave millions of Americans without access to the sort of capital necessary to buy a home or […]
Buying a Home When Your Partner Has Bad Credit
So, you’ve found a person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. When you met, it was like you’d known each other forever. And now, the two of you want to buy a home and build a life together. In an ideal world, your perfect partner would also have perfect credit. […]
How to Clean Up Your Credit When Preparing to Buy a Home
Maybe your credit history isn’t exactly stellar. Sure, you’d like to be a homeowner one day—maybe even one day soon. But that recent run of bad luck and/or bad decisions showing up on your credit report doesn’t put you or your credit management skills in the best light for potential mortgage lenders. Or maybe your […]
Buying a Home Soon? Here’s How to Protect Your Credit Score
Your credit score may never be more important than it is when you’re applying for a mortgage. It’s not easy to raise your credit score dramatically in a short period of time. But it is easy to inadvertently lower your credit score quickly. In a best-case scenario, a sudden drop in your credit rating during […]
How to Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report
Errors on credit reports are surprisingly common. A few years ago, the Federal Trade Commission completed a decade-long study which found that more than 20% of consumers had at least one error on a credit report significant enough to potentially hurt their credit score. If you’re looking to buy a home, get a loan, or […]
4 Tips to Balance Your Mortgage With Student Loans
Balancing any household budget can be a juggling act. Adding a mortgage loan on top of everything else can make it seem almost impossible. In fact, Millennials have put off big investments like purchasing a home, often citing the large amount of student loan debt they carry. But putting your life on hold forever is […]
When Should a Homebuyer Get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage?
As a first-time homeowner, you may not know is exactly when in the home buying process you should tackle the mortgage question. Too many homebuyers wait to worry about home financing until they’re knee-deep in negotiations on their dream home. Discovering a credit or financing issue too late can derail your home-owning hopes and dreams. […]
Want to Close Your Mortgage Quickly? Here are 6 Things You Should Do.
Maybe you’ve heard horror stories about mortgages gone wrong—particularly when mortgages don’t close quickly. Homebuyers stuck in living-in-a-hotel-limbo because they underestimated the length of time it would take to finalize their mortgage. The seller who backed out of a deal because the buyer’s mortgage lender was taking too long. A delayed application leading to higher […]
Buying a Home Together as an Unmarried Couple
While most homebuyers are married couples, about 15% of young homebuyers in the United States are unmarried couples purchasing a home together. In metro areas with hot housing markets like Tampa, Portland, and Washington, D.C, that number is even higher. With housing prices on the high side and mortgage interest rates at record lows, it […]
5 Ways to Watch Your Wallet When Buying a New Home
A home is probably the single most expensive thing you’re likely to purchase, ever. That means you’ll want to plan carefully for such a major financial undertaking. Smart buyers know that a little bit of legwork in the beginning can save thousands in the long run. Here are some tips to give you a leg […]
Morty’s Start-to-Finish Guide to House Hunting
House hunting can be fun, but it’s not always easy. From sorting out your personal finances to picking out paint colors, here’s our start-to-finish guide to finding the perfect home. Step Up Your Savings, and Clean Up Your Credit Would-be homeowners do not need to have 20% of the cost of their future home in […]
Don’t Even Think About Getting a Mortgage Until You Do These Three Things
The house-hunting shows on television make it look so simple: decide to buy a home. Stroll through a few open houses, fall in love with the perfect place, sign some papers, and pop open the champagne. Congratulations, you’re now a homeowner. But as with most things, television shows only the most glamorous parts of the […]
Four Mortgage Traps to Avoid
Homeownership is a dream-come-true for many Americans. But as home-owning friends and colleagues will readily tell you, navigating the potential pitfalls of mortgages and homeownership can be difficult. Many homeowners and would-be homebuyers have their home-owning dreams dashed because they failed to prepare for the potential pitfalls along the road to homeownership. Read on for tips […]
How to Use Credit Responsibly
This post is by MyBankTracker. MyBankTracker compares banks and financial products to help you find the best financial products for your lifestyle. I’ve been writing about debt for a long time – almost five years, in fact. That, mixed with a period of time dealing with my own student loans and credit card debt, left […]
How to Make Your Credit Score Mortgage-Ready
This post is brought to you by our friends at My BankTracker. Home ownership is one of those things that everyone thinks about sometimes. We all assume it will happen one day. We vaguely save money or think about the neighborhoods we’d want to live in. And then, all of a sudden, the idea takes […]